News: Local News

Granite Falls Elementary School second-graders gathered in Andrea Evans’s music classroom, hopping and wiggling in their places. With three cameras trained on them, they seemed eager to get started. Evans started the music, and the students burst into song, dancing with hands in the air and heads rocking.

One or more area companies could be fined as much as $25,000 by the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources related to at least two apparently illegal discharges of chemicals into a creek from a Virginia Street facility in Lenoir, according to state documents.

Caldwell County’s next representative to the state House of Representatives will be chosen Thursday, Jan. 29, at a special meeting of the Caldwell County Republican Party Executive Committee, state party officials announced Tuesday.

Proposals to plug the gaps in child protective services that were exposed by the death of Zahra Baker in 2010 are both needed and, in most cases, feasible, say officials with local and statewide agencies that deal with abused and neglected children.

John Mann, 88, slowly made his way to the stage at The Local Bean Coffee Shop in Hudson, where his karaoke machine already was waiting. He turned and stood in front of windows with large, decorative snowflakes and faux frost around the edges, pressed a few buttons on his machine and burst into song.

A number of readers have noticed that two items that had been included with the Sunday News-Topic have been missing in recent weeks. USA Weekend, a nationally syndicated magazine for newspapers, went out of business in December and will not return. The other publication, American Profile, reduced its publication frequency to twice a month, and because of a clerical error at American Profile the publication dropped the News-Topic from its distribution at the start of 2015. After repeated calls by Publisher Terese Almquist the News-Topic will resume receiving American Profile, which is scheduled to be distributed again beginning Sunday, Feb. 15.

Standing as a pillar of history, Hickory Hall is an empty, quiet building on the Patterson School’s old campus in the wilds of Caldwell County. However, within in the last few months, the building obtained a new roof, and now renovations are taking place inside.

With her dark hair up in a bow, Navaeh Monk, 3, walked slowly toward a board covered in knit hats, a few scarves and a multi-colored purse with a matching scarf. She seemed surprised and unsure what to do when told to pick out one she wanted to have because she was a winner.

An accusation from the sheriff that a man was a local "drug kingpin" wasn't enough to keep a judge from reducing the man's bond so he could be released from jail on house arrest while awaiting his trial.

But not keeping his ankle monitoring bracelet plugged in long enough landed Stephen Roger Dean, 26, back in jail Wednesday, with his bond jacked back up to $1 million.

When Tweetsie Railroad opens for the 2015 season in April, a new attraction will open next door offering the chance to navigate rope bridges, nets and climbing towers high above the meadows of Blowing Rock.

The murder of 10-year-old Zahra Baker in October 2010 following years of suspected child abuse points to gaps in the social services system and things that workers in both Caldwell and Catawba counties might have done to prevent her death, a new state report says.

Audience members heard a soft-spoken, hesitant “aye” from members of the Caldwell County Board of Education to approve sending a plan for merit-based pay raises to the state for approval. Superintendent Steve Stone said he hopes the plan can continue to be adjusted, but the deadline to submit it is Thursday.